The rapid diffusion of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) access and the increasing demand for WLAN coverage is driving the installation of a very large number of Access Points (AP). The most common WLAN technology is described in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE 802.11 family of industry specifications, such as specifications for IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g and IEEE 802.11a. A number of different 802.11 task groups are involved in developing specifications relating to improvements to the existing 802.11 technology.
Power consumption and battery life are issues for wireless devices. A number of power-saving techniques have been proposed to reduce power consumption and improve battery life. However, current techniques have not sufficiently addressed the issue of power consumption nor sufficiently reduced the number of on/off transitions to low power state for wireless devices.